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My dad brought it to Best Buy and they told him that the motherboard was fried and it's most likely due to the fact that my parents keep it on all the time. They said they could backup everything on the hard drive for $100 which I thought was way too expensive so does anybody know how they would be able to do this exactly? Would I just need an external hard drive to do this myself and back everything up by going into recovery mode?

Now, when I try and turn the computer on it goes to the HP startup screen and then after a second, it goes to this screen...

I've looked up this message and seen threads on fixing it but I'm not entirely sure what to do and I don't want to mess anything up. I work well with computers so if this is something that is fairly easy to fix, i'd much rather do it myself than have my parents buy a new desktop.

Have you tried the diagnostics? Were there any instructions/reports?
Setup probably won't help too much.
Boot menu does you no good unless you have a boot disk or thumb drive.
System Recovery might be your last choice - try a few other things before that. Other members might give you some ideas too.

As far as the $100 - you're right, that's a lot of money. But they do spend time doing it, and thy have the equipment to do it. Soooo.....

I bought a case for my laptop's drive when it died. Cost $15 at Office Max - good deal, now I use it as an external USB drive. So you could back up the drive if you have another machine and space. It's a good idea to do that anyway.

The Reboot-and-Select screen could be your drive or your bios. If bios gets confused, it doesn't know how to read your drive. If bios is fine, then there's something amiss on your drive. It doesn't mean all is lost, there are means to recover data. But that's another topic.

If you can recover the machine -last resort-, you might have to wipe the drive and do a factory restore. I'm not sure how far you'll get - if it's the mother board, it's replace that or get a new machine. Soooo, get either a USB cable or external case for your drive and try to back it up. Searched "SATA/PATA/IDE Drive to USB":

Thanks, I've been meaning to look for one for some of my older drives and this one might be what I need - it's a pretty good price.

Sorry I couldn't be more help, but there's very little to work on. I'd try some simple things after you back up your drive. See if you can get into safe mode, or boot from another disk/flash drive. If you can, then you might have a disk problem, but you;ll know that when you try to back it up.

So I chose "HP Diagnostics" like you said and everything checked out except for "Drives".
The message read:
"error code: biohd-2
no drives detected
turn off your system and verify the cables are securely attached
it problems persist, contact HP"

I opened up the computer, disconnected and reconnected all the plugs for the hard drive and still got the same "Reboot and Select proper Boot Device" screen. I looked up this error code and people say my computer is seeing the drive as inactive and the way to fix it is by marking it as active through DISKPART. The tutorial i'm following says I need either a Windows 7 installer disk or Windows repair disk which I don't believe I own because my dad likes to throw things away.

The first thing I would do, is to check whether the HDD is actually being detected. The easiest way to do this is if you get a BIOS readout, however I am willing to bet that as you have a HP machine, you don't get that, you just get a lovely HP splash screen when you switch on the machine.

Therefore, boot into the BIOS, (on a HP this is usually achieved by hitting F1 or F10 when you boot the machine up, if these don't work look for something saying "Press * to enter Setup" Once you've got in there, look for an option (usually under advanced BIOS settings....) called EITHER Boot Priority or First Hard Drive.

If you happen to come across boot order first (assuming you only have one HDD) make sure that its SECOND on the list, just under the DVD/CD drive (this is for later... if its what I hope it is). If the BIOS isn't seeing the HDD you have a drive problem, otherwise its a Windows problem.

For the record... if it was the motherboard the PC wouldn't even switch on.

The first thing I would do, is to check whether the HDD is actually being detected. The easiest way to do this is if you get a BIOS readout, however I am willing to bet that as you have a HP machine, you don't get that, you just get a lovely HP splash screen when you switch on the machine.

Therefore, boot into the BIOS, (on a HP this is usually achieved by hitting F1 or F10 when you boot the machine up, if these don't work look for something saying "Press * to enter Setup" Once you've got in there, look for an option (usually under advanced BIOS settings....) called EITHER Boot Priority or First Hard Drive.

If you happen to come across boot order first (assuming you only have one HDD) make sure that its SECOND on the list, just under the DVD/CD drive (this is for later... if its what I hope it is). If the BIOS isn't seeing the HDD you have a drive problem, otherwise its a Windows problem.

For the record... if it was the motherboard the PC wouldn't even switch on.

Anyway, let me know how you get on with that.

I went into "setup" and took a photo that I attached below. It clearly shows that none of the drives are being recognized and when I enter any one of them to choose a drive, there's nothing there. By the way, there is only one hard drive which makes things a bit less complicated.

Also, I went to the "boot" section in the setup menu and it says "boot device priority" and when I enter that, I can select the following:
-CD-ROM Group
-Hard Drive Group
-Floppy Group
-Network Boot Group

The hard drive is second on the list like you said so what am I doing wrong?

The first thing I would do, is to check whether the HDD is actually being detected. The easiest way to do this is if you get a BIOS readout, however I am willing to bet that as you have a HP machine, you don't get that, you just get a lovely HP splash screen when you switch on the machine.

Therefore, boot into the BIOS, (on a HP this is usually achieved by hitting F1 or F10 when you boot the machine up, if these don't work look for something saying "Press * to enter Setup" Once you've got in there, look for an option (usually under advanced BIOS settings....) called EITHER Boot Priority or First Hard Drive.

If you happen to come across boot order first (assuming you only have one HDD) make sure that its SECOND on the list, just under the DVD/CD drive (this is for later... if its what I hope it is). If the BIOS isn't seeing the HDD you have a drive problem, otherwise its a Windows problem.

For the record... if it was the motherboard the PC wouldn't even switch on.

Anyway, let me know how you get on with that.

I went into "setup" and took a photo that I attached below. It clearly shows that none of the drives are being recognized and when I enter any one of them to choose a drive, there's nothing there. By the way, there is only one hard drive which makes things a bit less complicated.

Also, I went to the "boot" section in the setup menu and it says "boot device priority" and when I enter that, I can select the following:
-CD-ROM Group
-Hard Drive Group
-Floppy Group
-Network Boot Group

The hard drive is second on the list like you said so what am I doing wrong?

-Thanks

Since you had an existing drive and it doesn't show up anymore, the drive is probably dead. You can try changing cables and trying a different power connector, but if the drive worked and now no longer works, this likely means the drive has failed. Drives can stop working due to an electrical or mechanical problem. A mechanical problem with the hard drive usually manifests itself in grinding or squeaking noises, random crashes or data loss. Electrical problems can happen instantly, without warning: Such as what you stated in your original post.

To verify its failed, try connecting it to another computer and test the results.

Since you had an existing drive and it doesn't show up anymore, the drive is probably dead. You can try changing cables and trying a different power connector, but if the drive worked and now no longer works, this likely means the drive has failed. Drives can stop working due to an electrical or mechanical problem. A mechanical problem with the hard drive usually manifests itself in grinding or squeaking noises, random crashes or data loss. Electrical problems can happen instantly, without warning: Such as what you stated in your original post.

To verify its failed, try connecting it to another computer and test the results.

HTH

Thanks, i'll test it out on another computer and see what happens.

If it is the hard drive, is there any way that I can still save the data on it?

My money is also on drive failure. By all means try it in a different SATA port and change the cable and power connector as suggested, but if the drive is dead, chances are the data is unrecoverable if the PC can't even find it, if your BIOS isn't finding it, then the PC can't find it either. (the BIOS basically tells the OS what drives it has available, in non-techy speak) If it's an electrical failure, chances are the drive controller is dead, meaning the PC can't actually talk to the hard drive any more.

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